In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, and the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Human Rights House Zagreb will hold a public debate “Human Rights Defenders”, as a part of this year’s Human Rights Film Festival program on Friday,... •••

Although the HDZ’s MEPs recently supported Orban in the European Parliament, the Prime Minister Plenković should insist on condemning the Hungarian human rights violations during the today’s meeting with Prime Minister Orban in Zagreb – this is the joint message by civil society organisations: Human Rights House Zagreb, Center for... •••

Together with partnering civil society organizations (Human Rights House Zagreb, Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Serb National Council, GONG and Documenta - Center for Dealing with the Past), Centre for Peace Studies participated in reporting of violent incidents committed out of hatred for ODIHR's yearly report that was published today,... •••

Human Rights House Zagreb has published a report "Support System for Victims of Hate Crime in Croatia", which is the result of a survey conducted in Croatia within the transnational project "V-START - Support to Victims through Raising awareness and networking". The project is funded by the Directorate-General Justice and... •••

(Brussels, October 10, 2018) – Croatia’s government should end the confinement of children and adults with disabilities in institutions, five disabled people’s and human rights organizations said today in a letter to Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. Despite some initial progress, the process of moving people out of institutions and into community-based living has stalled, the... •••

In Croatia, hate speech is on the rise – discriminatory, inflammable and discrediting content can be seen and heard in public and transmitted through the media – although Croatia has very good legislative framework that prohibits hate speech (or “incitement to hate”) through not just Penal Code (Article 325) but also through Anti-discrimination Act (under Article 25 on harassment). However, prohibition under the law is not enough – we are still lacking prosecution – or quality case law that could serve as prevention mechanism to the public and to the ones using hate speech.

By the statistics given by the Hate Crimes Monitoring Group for Croatia, in 2015* there were 24 hate crimes recorded by the police, out of which in 15 cases bias motive was racism and xenophobia and by the hate crime type, most of them were criminal offenses of threats / threatening behavior. This statistic is not complete as there is huge underreporting problem, as civil society organizations point out – for example, Serb National Council, CSO that annually publishes Bulletin – a yearly dossier on hate speech and violence against Serbs, points out that in 2015 there were 189 cases of ethnically motivated violence against Serbs, number ten times higher than the one in the official statistics.

To better identify, prevent and tackle hate crime and hate speech, different parties’ knowledge and skills in this area must be enhanced. In addition to authorities, potential victims must also be better informed of the available support services, among other things.

The objective of the project AGAINST HATE is to develop the work against hate crime and hate speech. The project focuses on the development of hate crime and speech reporting, on the enhancement of the capacity of the police, prosecutors and judges to act against hate crime and hate speech. The project also aims to enhance cooperation and coordination between the different actors. The project will continue until the end of 2019.

Key messages we are promoting with AGAINST HATE activities are:

Hate crime and hate speech are violations of human rights and as such, they need to be firmly sanctioned.

Hate speech and hate crime can only be tackled through joint effort and cooperation of the whole society by preventive mechanisms such as education and awareness raising and not only by reactive ones such as legal sanctions.

Hate speech has to have alarming effect on the society as it shows the imbalance / intolerance towards (between) groups in the society. By reacting to it, we can prevent further violence (or escalation of violence) known as hate crime.

Judicial system and legislation can be utilized more effectively to combat hate speech and hate crime and provide assistance to victims.

This web page has been produced with the assistance of the European Union within "Education for Citizens- Citizens for Social Development and Solidarity" project under IPA 2012 Building Capacities of CSOs for Ensuring Effective Implementation of the EU Standards in the Enforcement of Human Rights. The contents of this web page are the sole responsibility of Human Rights House and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.
The views expressed in this web page do not necessarily reflect the position of the Croatian Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs.

This project is financed by European Union

This project is co-financed by Croatian Government Office for Cooperation